Grayson > Recent Status Updates

My feelings about this book are shaping up to be very similar to my feelings about Remarkably Bright Creatures, which can be summed up as "this author comes across like she wanted to write something Super Weird(tm) but is the kind of reader who wouldn't be caught dead reading anything actually weird."

I was a little worried when I started this that I'd been drawn in again by The Hype to something that couldn't match said hype, but the deeper I get into it the more it matches the hype!

"A wild rice argument can wreck friendships, kill marriages, if allowed to rage. I had to interfere."

"It's taken me years, but I've read all of Proust, I need something complicated." "Have you read the Russians?" "My god, has it come to this!?"

Louise Erdrich why did I wait so long to read more of your stuff

I have Thoughts about both The Scouring of the Shire/all the long epilogue stuff/Appendix A but that Legolas and Gimli closure though....I don't even know where to start with the shipping puns

The House of Healing chapter giving me a lot of after the fact feelings about Le Guin's Tehanu - despite there being some powerful women in this story the way they're all handled as if wayward and fragile is very evocative of what Le Guin so beautifully critiqued

If there's one thing I think the movies really improved on its the character of Aragorn - his characterization is very flat and a little insufferable in the books and the exchange with Eowyn is painfully paternalistic and infantilizing where I think Tolkien meant it to come across as noble and self-sacrificing

REALLY was not expecting the po-tay-toes exchange to actually be in the book too hahahahahaha

I know I've seen references to how long the chapter with the Ents was but tbh I could have read a whole book just of that bit. Meanwhile, 6 and a half hours in and still haven't heard from Frodo and Sam lol.

Listen I didn't fully get the Legolas and Gimli vibes in the movies, probably because Gimli is turned into such comic relief in the movies, but I definitely get them here

I really wasn't expecting this to be a "can't put it down" kind of read and yet here we are

Really nice pictures and diagrams and some interesting tidbits so far, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired - somewhere between an out of control magazine article and clearly a coffee table vanity publication for Patagonia

Among other really big insights into Ukrainian, Russian, and generally eastern European history, this book has so far made WW1 make sense in a way IB/AP classes, a history minor in college, and a graduate degree never managed, so jot that down lol

This book continues to get weirder and weirder, enjoying it but may have to set it down until I'm in a better headspace for lighter reads

This is incredibly bizarre, I love it (though I'll never be able to look at clams the same way)

Lol this gives me so much respect for Debi Shearwater standing up to these people, wish I'd been able to take one of her boat trips before she retired in 2019

Still have issues with the way the author is framing this like he's at a business networking event slash baseball game, but the history of birding bit and especially the history of the xmas bird count/big days/big years was interesting! I knew about Audubon and a little about early 20th century stuff but not a lot between then and now.

Feeling pretty meh about this one, started reading it since it's a birding classic but it feels so totally disconnected from the kinds of birders and birding I actually enjoy, mostly just hypercompetitive wealthy men who don't actually seem that interested in the birds and an author/narrator who seems more interested in their career credentials

Have reached the point that I reach in all novels of this kind where I desperately hope it turns out to be a werewolf horror story even though I know it won't

Mostly picked this up on a whim because it felt like a February mood, so far it's intriguing but the audiobook narrator leaves a lot to be desired (moves way too quickly through pauses in dialogue/action, which is killing the suspense/tension, mainly).

I'm....not sure how I feel about this one yet. It might just be coming off the glow of the much more literary Confessions of the Fox, but so far while the premise is somewhat interesting it's also more Edgy Teen Dystopia than I was expecting for how much good press this book has gotten. The necromancy themes, while interesting, add to this a bit with how unsubtle they are.

Like the nuanced take on the relation between drag and trans identity, not into the appropriative/unqualified "shamanism" talk but I've found it pretty common in queer lit from the 80s and 90s so I'm not surprised by it. There are definitely things to be said about the spiritual aspect of transition that often get left out but grabbing pop culture understandings of "exotic" spirituality are not how to do it.

Reading this makes it so clear in hindsight how ignorant liberals are about how fascists use centrism to push the needle farther right - Bornstein says TERFs aren't a big problem because they don't hold societal power, and is fine with Caitlyn Jenner dreaming about being the trans wonderchild advisor to Trump.

It has been zero (0) days since last cis nonsense, like putting flat boring gendered jokes on...animals with no concept of gender. So far I really like the idea of this book but the actual execution is trying so incredibly hard to be funny and clever.

Like all my favorite Mexican and Latin American literature, this book hits the perfect absurdist balance between "life is horrific" and "life is hilarious."

"Rather than redemption, matsutake forest revitalization picks through the heap of alienation. In the process, volunteers acquire the patience to mix with multispecies others without knowing where the world-in-progress is going."

"'When people say, 'things were better in the old days,' what they have in mind, I believe, is the joy of doing things together with many people. We have lost that joy.'"

This is a little bit brain-breaking but in the best anthropological way.

Still super interesting theology, still sticking his nose/entire face into secular science he has a pop-science understanding of (linguistics this time)